#2: On ambition

“Who says that getting what you want makes you happy?”

Things I Ask My Mother is a bimonthly newsletter, featuring one conversation between me (Mattie Kahn) and my mother (the incandescent Nessa Rapoport) on a topic that consumes us.

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My mother and I spend a lot of time talking about what we want—attractive sandals; for [redacted publication] to be a little bit better than it is; a reliable, but not burnt dark roast coffee; wild success; six back-to-back vacations; for 89% of people to leave us alone.

So it made sense that we would cover ambition—wanting, wanting, wanting—in this newsletter. We have our own perspectives on what constitutes success. But I grew up knowing that there was an expansive universe of stuff out there that she wanted to do and accomplish, separate from her children. It made me feel a little awe. I still feel a little awe.

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Mattie: I want to start with a confession, which is that I almost wanted to cancel this conversation because I am experiencing a profound lack of motivation this morning. But since our topic this week is ambition, that felt like a good place to start. 

Nessa: You have no motivation because it’s Friday.

Mattie: It’s also so beautiful outside. The trouble is that when the weather is good, you don’t want to do anything because you just want to go outside. And when the weather is bad, you just want to curl up and go back to bed. So what are the conditions for doing great work? 

Nessa: Well, doesn't that sum up the dilemma of ambition?

Mattie: Please solve it for me. 

Nessa: You have to work through it. I’ve read about writers who turn their backs to the window—something I find indescribably depressing—to get their work done. But we’re never going to do that. 

Mattie: We never will. Here’s what I believe: I think there was a time when I was a model of nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic. I had a clear sense of what I wanted and what ambition was. And I think that time was a decade ago.

Nessa: What changed? 

Mattie: It felt to me then like I wanted one thing. I wanted to do well in high school and then I wanted to get into college. After that, I wanted a lot more, and it wasn’t as linear—the process of getting there. It wasn’t like, “Pass this series of tests.” So I don’t feel as single-minded as I used to. That might not be a bad thing. 

Nessa: There’s also the recognition that comes with age—that getting what you want is not always the reward you thought it would be. To quote a friend of mine, “Who says that getting what you want makes you happy?” 

Mattie: Do you think being ambitious is a bit naive? In the sense that how can any of us know what we really want? 

Nessa: No, not at all. What I’ve discovered about ambition and life is that you need drive and you need to be determined, but—and I know this sounds a little woo-woo—you also need to open yourself up to the universe. Because things happen in careers, as they do in love and life, that aren’t on a track and cannot be anticipated. 

I want to invoke the context out of which my ambition came, because it’s so different from where we are now. When I watched TV as a child, the commercials were full of women in shirtwaist dresses talking about cleaning. The women I knew could be teachers, librarians, social workers, or secretaries, if they worked outside the home at all. The rest of them were waiting for their husbands to come home. No one asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Then, in 1963, The Feminine Mystique came out, which explained how women were quietly going insane in their houses, cleaning and cleaning for no reason except to clean again. 

When I was 17, as these questions about work and career came up because high school was ending, feminism was in bloom. It was transformative. If I had been 10 years older, you would have been visiting me in a mental institution. You might not even exist!

Ambition doesn’t take just one form. If you have a vocation for raising children and you’re pretty secure financially, so that if something happens to your partner, you have a way of earning a living or family means, then that’s a great calling. I just knew—much as I adore my children—that I had other gifts and other dreams. 

Mattie: Well, that’s interesting. I agree of course that it’s a valid calling, but I don’t think people in general think you can be “ambitious” about motherhood. You can have tremendous empathy for the people in your life and you can be an incredible listener, but we wouldn’t identify a person who had those skills as an “ambitious” friend. Ambition isn’t just pursuing excellence, right? It’s pursuing excellence that the outside world understands as excellent and valuable, right? 

Nessa: I’m not sure ambition means pursuing excellence. I think ambition for me is about wanting to leave your mark on the world. 

Mattie: You could absolutely leave your mark on the world by raising your children, but I don’t think you can be ambitious about interpersonal relationships. I don’t think of parenthood as something a person can be ambitious about.

Nessa: I do. What I feel, having read thousands of biographies and being the age I am, is that almost no one is remembered after they’re gone. Almost no one. So why are we doing it? Whatever it is? 

Mattie: That’s the question! 

Nessa: I’m going to look it up, the Merriam-Webster definition of ambition. Here it is: “A. An artist’s desire for rank, fame, or power.” I don’t agree with that. “B. Desire to achieve a particular end.” I don’t  agree with that, either.

Mattie: Wow, I did not expect this. You and Merriam! Enemies. 

Nessa: I know, we’re breaking up. Here is a different definition: “Ambition: A strong desire to do or achieve something.” And under that: “Subset: desire and determination to achieve success.” That’s closer. But I certainly think you can be ambitious without achieving success. 

When we were beginning our careers—my friends and I—we had very, very big dreams. Each of us. And we fulfilled them, in a lot of ways. But I wonder if in this era, it’s harder to be ambitious because there are so few guarantees now in working life. What does it mean to be ambitious when you can’t count on a certain kind of career track? Maybe there are still professions, like law or medicine in some cases, where the path is clear, but for most of your generation, that does not seem to be the case.  

Mattie: I think that’s one of the reasons that for many people in my generation, the ambition is to be able to be independent. The ambition is to know that your life is set up to account for contingencies, to be okay, no matter what—not that anyone can ever really ensure that. The goal is to attain a level of personal security, such that whatever happens in your particular industry, you're able to get through it.

Nessa: In terms of personal security, do you mean psychological or financial?

Mattie: Both.

Nessa: That seems hard. 

Mattie: Yes, that’s why we all need so much therapy. Do you think your definition of ambition has changed as you’ve gotten older? Or do you think you are still kind of wedded to the one that you had when you were 17?

Nessa: I don’t think it’s different. I think I understand it better. How can I say this? I no longer mix up the attainment of fame with the fulfillment of my ambition. I know the difference between having the name of the thing you’ve always wanted and having fruitful, meaningful work. I would connect my idea of ambition to meaning, to having a life that helps me fulfill what my hopes for myself are. I have written about my sense that God pours into each of us our unique gifts, and our task in the world is to pour them back and redeem the pledge of our birth—so that once we’ve left the world, we can feel we’ve given it all back, whatever we were given at the start. For other people, it’s not God who is endowing us with our gifts. But whatever you believe, I do think that everybody has some way to bring more light into the world. And so for me, the word ambition has a glow about it. I admire it. I honor it. I savor it in my friends. It makes me happy to think of all the ways they’ve enriched the world. Not that there haven’t been setbacks and failures. It’s not linear. But in my mind, ambition has an aura. 

Mattie: A condition of ambition seems to be focus. Even if you’re open to the world and to new opportunities, at a certain point you need to buckle down and do the thing. We might feel that some people coast on a false reputation, but for the most part the work is work. I sometimes think the biggest enemy of my own ambition is the low-level hum of anxiety I feel when I’m not doing the thing. 

Nessa: I do want to point out that to the outside world, we both seem extremely accomplished and ambitious. You know my theory is that only ambitious people are constantly berating themselves for not doing enough. Everyone I know who is truly ambitious always has a dream of doing more, not only to win the external prizes or for recognition, but in a spiritual sense. 

If you feel you’ve made an impact, the next thing you want to do is make that impact on more people. It’s when you achieve something that you find yourself hungrier than ever. Because a vista has opened up before you of what’s possible—and now you want to do even more. 

Mattie: Is it fair to say that you think there’s a moral component to ambition? 

Nessa: For me, there’s no point being ambitious without that dimension. What do you gain? Remember when I told you about reading that anecdote where someone stood at the front of a room full of people and said, “How many of you truly, really believe you’re going to die?” And only half the people put up their hands?

Mattie: Yes, I think about that all the time. 

Nessa: When you’re older, you know it’s true. You have some perspective on these kinds of questions. But the learning is developmental, and there’s no shortcut. You have to find out what values like ambition turn out to be for you. 

Mattie: Do you think you can be ambitious and still be kind to yourself?

Nessa: It’s the only way.

Mattie: But wouldn’t you say you were always ambitious, but it was only later that you learned to be kind to yourself? 

Nessa: That wasn’t about my ambition! I wasn’t conflicted about wanting to work, to earn a living, to make my mark, even apart from writing. The conflicts I experienced stemmed much more from not being sanctioned to be ambitious in those formative childhood years before feminism. I think that would be true for many women. You, on the other hand, were ambitious from the time you were born. I remember how, when you were in high school, I would wake up in the morning and find on the dining room table your little square pieces of paper with your handwritten schedule. You know, 6:30 p.m. to 7 p.m.; 7 p.m. to 7:45 p.m.; 7:45 p.m. to 9 p.m. How you laid out what you were going to do for school, for homework, for your responsibilities outside of school. You had it figured out. You come by it honestly. You have two ambitious parents. I think everyone I know is ambitious—in their own ways. 

Mattie: That’s kind of a relief. But I do think people’s sense of what they want changes.

Nessa: Very much. And I hope it does. The reason I’m pausing is because I don’t have the language to describe the mystery aspect of all of this—how coincidence or affinity or chance play a role, even in a very ambitious career. You don’t know whom you’re going to meet, or when something is going to fall apart and you’re heartbroken, and then the very next instant, opportunity comes along. It’s not that everything happens for a reason. Ugh. But it’s true that you’re sometimes glad that what you wanted so desperately didn’t work out. That’s what I could not have understood in my twenties.

Mattie: That’s a hopeful place to conclude.

Nessa: Love you, darling. 

Mattie: Love you, Mom.

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